The fact of the matter was, she had a perfect digestion which she used carefully and never abused. She ate moderately and slowly, with an entire disregard to what is usually considered good for old people. She rose at seven; in her youth and middle age she took a cold bath, in later years the bath was tepid--well or ill, it was never omitted. During the last twenty years, that great fourth score so rich in happiness to herself and her family, and that greater family of hers, the Public, she took a little light wine with her dinner, “for her stomach’s sake,” as she would say, quoting St. Paul. This, with a cup of tea for breakfast, was the only stimulant she needed, for her spirits were so buoyant, her temperament so overflowing with the _joie de vivre_, that we called her the “family champagne.” Breakfast with us was a social meal; there was always conversation and much laughter for she came down in the morning with her spirits at their highest level. She slept about eight hours. Until her seventieth year I never knew her to lie down in the daytime, unless she was suffering with headache. The first part of that seventieth year was not a good time for her. More hearty healthy people are killed every year by the sentence: “The days of our years are threescore years and ten,” than by any four diseases you like to name. Even her radiant health, her buoyant temperament felt its depressing influence; as the weeks and months went by and she found herself quite as vigorous in her seventieth year as she had been in her sixty-ninth, she forgot all about her age and resumed her activities, retaining under protest the daily nap. She lay down with the clock on the bed beside her; twenty minutes was quite time enough to “waste in napping!” During the last five or six years, always grudgingly, she gave a little more time to resting, taking a half-hour’s siesta before luncheon, another before dinner, “to rest her back.” She always sat in a straight backed chair, never in her long life having learned how to “lounge” in an easy chair. She was by nature a night owl and never wanted to go to bed if there was any other night owl to keep her company. So much for her use of that faithful servant, the body. If the development of her muscles was not quite up to the modern standard, her intellectual training far surpassed it. From first to last she kept her mind in the same state of high training that the athlete keeps his body, strove for that perfect balance of power in all the different functions of the brain that an all-round athlete aims for in his physique. I never remember a time when she relaxed the mental gymnastics that kept her mind strong, supple, active. Once, at a crucial moment, when beset by perplexities, I asked for advice, her answer, stamped on my memory as long as it shall hold together, was given in three Latin words: